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hand clasped round a beer can. The boys standing round him were muscular and not one of them had yet acquired the stigmata of the forestry worker. Väine, the seventeen-year-old, appeared to be drunk, breathing heavily, his mouth open. He was as beefy as the others. Birger felt fat and flabby before all this looming muscularity.
    Åke again asked about the rake handle, but was given the same answer. Torsten didn’t budge. In the end that great hand round the can looked rather forced. He was still sitting in the same position when they left and did not reply when they said goodbye.
    By then they were both hungry, so they went to the cabin before leaving. They had reckoned on fish for the evening and hadn’t purchased much more than beer and bread. But Birger had bought a sausage ring in case the fishing was bad.
    ‘Isn’t there a bar or a hotel here?’ said Åke.
    ‘No, not here.’
    They ate slices of sausage on crispbread. Birger thought it was good. That was what he ate more and more frequently whenever Barbro was away, though just as frequently he thought he really ought to start cooking properly. He wondered what Åke did. He knew he lived alone, though not whether he was divorced or a widower, or simply a bachelor.
    Birger felt just like some old bachelor as they got into the car and drove up to the Blackreed River. People were heading for the community centre. The music thumped. They watched girls in summer clothes hurrying down the hill, perceiving them as moist fragrance, despite the thick glass of the windscreen. He wondered what Barbro was doing. She was out organising an information meeting on the uranium prospecting on Bear Mountain, and he didn’t think she would want to join in the Midsummer celebrations. Last year she hadn’t even wanted to celebrate Christmas.
    There were cars outside Lill-Ola’s fishing-tackle booth and when Åke saw the shop was open, he said he wanted to get some more flies. But Birger managed to steer him away. Åke would discover that the men in the cars were drunk and at worst he would realise that Lill-Ola Lennartsson sold other things as well as fishing flies and licences. And Åke would not be able to ignore drink-driving. At this rate, they would get no fishing at all.
    A young woman was sitting outside Aronsson’s, a small girl beside her. Birger thought they looked old-fashioned, perhaps because the little girl had plaits and the woman was wearing a long blue skirt. They were sitting on cases just below the loading stand and appeared to be waiting for someone. But the woman seemed resigned. For a moment he thought of asking her where she was going and whether anyone was coming to fetch her. But he had no desire to be officious.
     

He tried shading his watch so that he could see the hands, but the light from above was too bright and at the same time too poor at the bottom of the well to make out the numbers. He had no real idea how long he had been down the well. The sharp stones and the smell of mud, the rough shale and the circle of light above dazzling him – it was a shaft right down into timelessness, a vacuum for him and him alone. He found he had to sit down in the mud. The seat of his jeans was already wet, so maybe that didn’t matter much, but he was cold. After he had got down, had shoved aside a few stones and was sitting with his forehead against his knees, he thought he felt a movement just by him.
    He sat dead still. This was silly. There couldn’t be anything in the well. No rats. He considered hallucinations – was he so weak he was already having them?
    He could feel nothing with his foot through his stiff boot, so he had to grope with his hand among the stones. He distinctly felt something quiver against his palm, something cold and smooth. Then a strong movement like an arm striking out. He screamed.
    He stood up, stamping and kicking, yelling insanely up at the circle of light.
    ‘Help! Help! Get me out!’
    Finally he was just screaming, no